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Update 8/26: You can now make calls from your Gmail interface even without a Google Voice account, but the two services play well together (North America only for free calls; international calls originating from the US are cheaper than the very cheap service I currently use). Here are some useful and less-useful tips and tricks from Lifehacker.

If you live in the US, Google Voice is now open to everyone. I wrote about it before, but now you don’t need an invitation to use it. By the way, if you’re US-based but working overseas, it might still be worth getting if you have a friend in the US who could activate it for you–it’ll give you a US number you can use for web-based texting (you can get the texts in e-mail) and voice mail, so friends and family can call you and leave messages on their own schedule. You’d get an e-mail with a link to the recording and a transcription (when it works). It might be great in an emergency, for people with totally incompatible schedules, and for relatives who don’t do e-mail. As I mentioned before, it’s really an amazing thing for private tutors and “freeway flyers” with 3 different work numbers, too.

Anyway, Lifehacker has done a good job writing about it in the past as well as now that it’s open:

Now, I haven’t really noticed the lag that they mention, but I have had 1 call out of the calls that a client has made to me not go through, and 1 other call was garbled so badly that I couldn’t hear him. That was during the beta test, though, so I’m hoping that things are better now. It really has made life easier, and my husband uses it all the time so that his students can call him (he’s a part-time community college teacher) and text him (they mostly prefer texting to e-mail). It lets him communicate with them on both their terms and his terms (he hates texting, but typing on a keyboard is fine). He turns the number’s setting to ring when he’s on campus, but it’s generally on Do Not Disturb (straight to voice mail) when he’s at home, unless something special is going on.

Anyway, if you’re already interested and you want to give it a try, go to http://www.google.com/voice/

My job is a little unusual. I’m not a Freeway Flyer, tenured community college instructor, or IEP teacher–I’m essentially a tutor, although I usually don’t use that word to describe my job.

I think “tutor” makes people think of a college student earning a few dollars by teaching the neighbor kids how to do algebra, but I see myself more as a language and culture consultant. I’m still somewhat new to this, but so far I really, really like it, and I want to keep doing it.

My students, or clients, are adults (except for one 14-year-old) from East Asia. We do everything–from working through “Blue Azar” to editing accounting reports, from reading comics to discussing why American businesspeople don’t generally go out drinking together. I often play “cultural informant,” as my anthropology professors would have put it: trying to predict how a client’s boss might react to a gift, or helping interpret a grocery store ad. For me, these exchanges are exciting and rewarding.

Most of my current clients are through a large corporation that handles international relocation–the clients’ companies pay the corporation for a package that includes English lessons for them and their families, and the corporation pays me. The corporation lets me manage everything myself beyond an initial needs assessment, so I have almost total freedom to teach the clients as I see fit. Other students are direct clients.

Because I’m considered a consultant/contractor by the corporation, and because my direct clients have hit a certain critical mass, I’m in the process of becoming a business. I’m an educator and an entrepreneur. (I should be filing my business license tomorrow!) I’ll do occasional posts about this process, because I think there’s relatively little information out there.

While I’ll write about some of the drawbacks of this arrangement later, let me give you some of the advantages:

I have total academic freedom (materials, topics, methods, everything)

No power struggles or politics

I can set my own schedule

I can work more or less according to my time and budget

I can cancel or reschedule lessons any time

I really get to know my students (and I never worry about multilevel classes)

Socializing with clients is okay (I don’t give grades or feedback to their bosses)

Students get really focused, personal attention

I don’t have to commute–some clients come to me, but all are within a 5-mile radius

I never get bored–every client is different, and I get to learn about new fields

Clients are seriously motivated and appreciative

No pressure to teach to a test

No classroom discipline issues

I can “fire” my students if I want to, though I’ve never had to

And finally (don’t hate me!) no stacks of papers to grade!

If you’ve done this kind of work, what are some other advantages? I know I’m missing several.

The disadvantages are not insubstantial, though. I’ll definitely be discussing the many drawbacks and how I’m trying to address them.

If you have questions about doing this kind of work, leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to try to answer in a future post.